ルーパーズ ♾ Chapter 3 (Visual Novel Book Club)

Current chapter start date: July 29, 2022
Home thread: ルーパーズ ♾ (Visual Novel Book Club) // Currently Reading!

Loopers

Previous part: Week 2
Next part: Week 4

We’re reading ルーパーズ as part of the Visual Novel Book Club!

As of the time of posting this, reading is scheduled for 1 chapter per week. But feel free to jump in and ask questions or give your thoughts later! There are always people watching these threads :eyes:

Pace

The current chapter can be seen in the menu, and you’re encouraged to keep an eye on that if you wish to read at the club’s official pace! To make this easier, the following image also marks the end of the chapter. While the image may not necessarily be a meaningful spoiler, it’s collapsed by default as there’s no reason to immediately display the images to anyone who crosses through this thread. 用心するに越したことはない

Chapter End Image

Chapter 3

Discussion Guidelines

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
  • When asking for help, do your best to provide context. Pasted text, screenshots, descriptions, etc. Unlike book clubs we can’t flip to relevant pages, so we may need a little help identifying exactly what is being discussed.
  • Feel totally at ease to ask questions or give your thoughts, any time! Clubs live and die by participation, and asking whatever question you have, no matter how silly it may seem, helps others who are reading it and even the answerer themselves.
  • Have fun, and do your best to interpret anything said with as much good faith as possible :slightly_smiling_face:

Participants

  • I’m reading along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still reading but haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m no longer reading

0 voters

7 Likes

I’m still reading this chapter, I think I’m about halfway through. I got to the part where タイラ found the イヌーピーのキーホルダー treasure. I’ll finish the rest of the chapter this weekend but early thoughts so far.

Spoilers

I was not expecting this tone shift, especially so early! I guess the curse really is upon ヒルダ.I’m kind of surprised after she knocked out レオナ she just left her there lol. I guess ヒルダ thought (or wanted to believe) that レオナ was just messing with her, but I thought ヒルダ would have gone back to check on her before she heard ambulances coming.


While she was waiting to see if レオナ would call her to tell her she was just fooling around, we got to see ヒルダ’s screensaver on her phone. I thought it was a cute touch to show how close they are. With レオナ now hospitalized, I’m curious how things will play out. When ヒルダ got cursed, this wasn’t what I was expecting.

Since I’m still reading through the chapter, not too much to say from when it changed to タイラ’s PoV, but I thought the names in the log book were funny. “TAKARASAGASHIMAN” was my favorite of the bunch :joy:

11 Likes
That part

Inoopy! :dog:

image

(I love the pun :joy: )

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How did I not… I’m ******* stupid. Thank you for explaining that one.

7 Likes

I dunno if someone already said it somewhere, but this chapter has, by my count, roughly 6600 characters. I’ll go make a table for character count so far as was mentioned by @Sylph

:face_exhaling: you and me both.

Halfway spoilers for responding to AzusaChan

So sudden! I love how this game keeps pulling this stuff. Constantly keeping the pace up so far, a nice benefit to reading something so short. Same thoughts on ヒルダ just leaving, guess when you’re in shock you might act dumb but wow don’t leave someone like that haha.

Was thinking the exact same about the phone, super cute.

More spoilers

Interesting how much they gave us here! I mean we still know nothing, but we know a whole lot about what we don’t know? Heh. I think the reading experience would be so different if this game wasn’t called Loopers and so upfront with the time travel thing. The moment we knew レオナ was going in the ambulance my thoughts turned to “well I guess she’ll be better next time and we’re accelerating towards the looping.”

We’ve got a couple expert loopers of a sort speaking annoyingly cryptically, as you do to an audience, and what seems to be a few more people getting pulled into the situation… potentially by influence of the mysterious girl searching for something? My guess is her deal is at the core of it anyway. I’m going to guess the whole 探し女 story is either a red herring or a “generous” interpretation of whatever is really happening. My assumption is we’re going to move away from horror over time, as things initially presented to be horrific are eventually revealed to not be so, but we’ll see.

Non spoilers… lots of very good words here! Had to cut myself off on making cards. I learned 渦 literally today on WK and what good timing. 海老反り is a cool term.

11 Likes

Ok, this went from 0-100 real fast…
Taking a second look at that keychain there’s no way I would have connected that to Snoopy.

current chapter spoilers

I know they’re kids, but the questionable decision making is off the rails here. I like タイラ, but immediately chasing after that guy was pretty nuts. It really lines up with his profile mentioning that he liked sentai stuff, though. It was a bit silly, but for a moment I thought he was cool.

I was thinking how it was a bad day to be a レオナ fan. Even if the title is ルーパーズ I didn’t have a reason to think she’d be ok. Later on when ミア reveals she knows our cast she says 「レオナも不憫です…」 so I’m guessing her ‘normal’ is with レオナ hospitalized. Even if things have changed a bit I’m still worried T_T

Finally, 探し女 bugging タイラ at the end surprised me. Maybe I should have expected that after レオナ’s weird behavior, but I thought that was mostly going to be a ヒルダ problem.

chapter 4 spoilery stuff

Leafing through when I was testing things I think I saw more 探し女 stuff… Not going to lie, that kind of supernatural stuff is a little tough for me. Creepy music in particular really does me in so I am so not looking forward to slowly reading my way through the next chapter. With the title and seemingly normal cast I was expecting this VN to be more like uh “Window of Opportunity” from SG-1 lol.

…events that occur during each loop having no consequences once the loop is over, which inspires O’Neill and Teal’c to indulge in wildly outrageous behavior as a means of dealing with the boredom and frustration of being caught in repeating time.

I miss that show >.>

8 Likes

Yeah as a general response to some of the spoilers – if I had known there was a degree of horror elements, that would’ve come as a warning during voting and before we started reading! I love it but I know some people really don’t like anything creepy. It’s not an aspect really advertised, though on second look I do see horror as a tag on VNDB with a really low score (ie it’s relevant but only in a minor way). I guess that’s also something we should try to check for in the future, if it’s in the non-spoiler tags, which it actually was this time.

7 Likes

Spoilery bit about horror amount in the Loopers:

The horror-like atmosphere is mostly present in the initial chapters, when Tyler and Hilda are getting caught in a loop, which causes all kinds of mayhem. Later on it switches to the stuff you’d usually expect from Key :wink: Fun stuff begins from Chapter 7 :slight_smile:

@ccookf

Spoiler about the conditions inside the loop

Actually, once the initial mayhem settles down, it is pretty much like the stuff you mentioned in your SG-1 reference - some characters are indeed trying many outrageous things once they discover that everything resets at the end of the day. You can even die, and in the next iteration of loop it’s as if nothing happened.

4 Likes

I finished reading the rest of the chapter now. That was a tough spot to stop at, things were getting way too interesting now!

Spoilers


We don’t know much about the looping stuff yet, but based on these lines, I wonder if they’ve repeated that same day before in the past? Their lines kind of points towards these things having had happened in the past but with different results. Definitely peaking my curiosity, I wonder what the condition will be for them to retain their memories after a loop happens?

9 Likes
One question please

What does フテんなくて mean here? I have the feeling this is some sort of informal abbreviation of something, but I was unable to find it in any dictionary.

8 Likes

I think フテ is short for 不貞腐れる based on this yahoo answer I found when I looked it up earlier. https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q1414211779

8 Likes

Well, this whole chapter was pretty unexpected stuff and it was hard to stop at the end. I didn’t expect レオナ to be affected instead of ヒルダ, and I have no idea what to think about those apparitions (the mad-レオナ and the presumed 探し女 showing before タイラ this time). It has been creepier than expected so far but I’m looking forward to finding out more.
I’m intrigued by the new characters and why they are doing what they are doing as well as how much they know about everyone else’s affairs.

Oh, this chapter took me a bit under 1h 10 min. It should be fun comparing this with times and character counts of later chapters to see if I’ve gotten any faster.

10 Likes

I read the first leg of the story up till we are back with タイラ for now.

Is it just me or does the visual novel go out of it’s way sometimes to use Kanji for stuff. It’s definitely not holding back and sometimes using more exotic/precise versions of them. Definitely not jouyou friendly XD. Paired with no furigana for that stuff and given I’m reading without a texthooker I had to look more up than I’d like to admit in this part.
(洒落、停まる for the nuance, 滅茶苦茶 cause i knew 目茶苦茶, 賑やか in the previous chapter, 窺う, etc)

8 Likes

Compared to Flowers, my other current visual novel, it’s such a breath of fresh air that it’s not using the most obscure kanji form for every single word haha. But yes, I kid, I think you’re right that Loopers goes heavy on it too. I wanted to blame the writer, Ryukishi07, because I’ve always heard his writing gets a little “literary” by VN standards, but then again, when I think about it, I saw almost everything you listed in Summer Pockets, another VN by the same developers but different writer. Could also be that Key prefers some of these forms in editing their work :person_shrugging:

6 Likes

I tried to read the whole chapter today, but as our resident slowest reader (I think xD), I did not manage it. I got to the part where the guy/killer/criminal has run from the park, and through the street and just arrived at the stairs.

I looked up 175 words, and some of them twice since they appeared again but by that time I’d forgotten them. My brain is so tired. I read in two longer sections. I don’t know how many hours each, but considering I have to draw a lot of those kanji because they appeared in narrative (of course!), it took a while. And it wasn’t like I could guess the words from context really.

If the chapters keep being this look up heavy, I’ll have to devise a new strategy for next week, because this much in one day is not a particularly fun way to read. Although the story have been good so that it didn’t become too much.

Spoiler stuff

More horror stuff. Leona. O_O First I was like “What is happening” and while I’m not typically a horror reader, this much I can handle and enjoy. But my poor Hilda.

I have a feeling Leona must have messed with Hilda pretty hugely before for her to just kinda run away, plus Hilda is freaking out. But I can’t see walking away from a seemingly unconscious friend, if such a friend in the past hadn’t played dead for longer then she should have. I know it only mentioned her having done it for a few seconds as a gag before, but maybe some other prank? Or maybe I want Hilda to have made less of a bad decision. xD

And then Tyler goes to try and be a hero, the teenage stupid way. :sweat_smile: You call/talk to the police first, don’t try to follow the potential killer. HAVEN’T YOU SEEN ANY HORROR MOVIES, TYLER?!?!?!

At least, once I got to the conversation with the guy/killer in the park, I was needing to do a few less look ups. Both because a lot of it had showed up earlier, and more just fell within my vocabulary range instead of outside it.

Made me a bit tempted to push through the last of it, but decided I’d rather not because what if there was another look up heavy section? Nah, I’ll read it tomorrow.

Not sure I have many thoughts beyond that. Again, no idea this was coming, well, from last chapter it was kinda obvious horror stuff was gonna happen. Although poor Leona seems to be the one taking the brunt of it so far (haven’t finished the chapter yet, have I?). In a way, it is kinda fitting, since it was probably Leona’s teasing that made Hilda make fun of 探し女.

I can’t open this link because Japan Yahoo is not available in EU or UK. :face_with_monocle: And it probably isn’t GDPR related since it happened only earlier this year… Weird.


And you know, Loopers represent with my pfp now. Because I wanted to be showcasing something I’m currently reading. I’m gonna figure out how to get screenshots from my Switch and then pick another Hilda face though, there were so many in the previous chapter to pick from and I already screenshoted a whole bunch of them. Probably gonna go with a smug Hilda. xD

10 Likes

Oh, sorry about that. I forgot it got blocked in some places recently, I can copy/paste their answer for you.
「不貞腐れる」は当て字だそうです。 辞書によると、「ふて腐れる」と書くのがよさそうですよ。 この語は自動詞下一段ですから、あえて線を引こうにも引くところがありません。 「ふて・くされる」で精一杯でしょう。 しかし、「ふて」を接頭語にしても、連用形「ふてくされ」が名詞「ふてくされ」 となったものでしょう。「ボクはフテクサレなんですよ」というべきでした。

I saw some other people on yahoo answers talking about フテ as a prefix and saw フテ寝 as an example. It is the first time I’ve seen it though, so not sure how common it is.

The pfp is very nice, she is still my favorite so far!

6 Likes

When I have to look up almost every word in every line while reading VN, it’s a sign that I’m too tired and it’s time to sleep :zzz::sleeping:

3 Likes

I wish that was why I needed to look up so many words. :sweat_smile: Unfortunately it was literally that I hadn’t seen most of those words before.

3 Likes

I truly was at the home stretch when I quit yesterday.

Chapter spoilers and predictions/speculation

So we meet Mia by way of kicking Tyler. :joy: Also Tyler being a good parkour person fits and adds some more to him. Seems he really trains to be the best treasure hunter, huh?

Also, still no actual sign of the time loop? Like we can suspect that the weird guy killed people because he’s in a loop. But the story haven’t revealed the looping, only advertising for the game and its title. That feels kinda weird since we’ve now finished chapter 3.

I wonder if that is why they made the looping thing so obvious in title and description and such. They wanted their readers to know from the beginning that that would happen eventually.

And 探し女 is currently something I believe is tied to the looping in some way. No idea how. Whether she shows up because of looping, or she’s been stuck in the loop so long her essence have worn out until she only exists as a ghost. Or maybe parallel universe stuff? Not sure what exactly, but my guess is that something about her is tied to the looping, at least for Hilda+Tyler+Leona. The possibilities for how though… are far too many to make a solid guess on.

9 Likes
More spoilers

Total speculation, but being wary of VNs misleading me, my assumption is that he didn’t actually kill anyone. IIRC we just have that idea because that was what the people in the neighborhood said? And I mean, obviously the ambulances and whatnot. But I think it was kept technically ambiguous enough. We saw a character seemingly just fall over and pass out (die?) on her own, because I really think the headbutt is indeed a red herring, which makes me think it’s quite possible there are others who are meeting a similar fate. Under that assumption, he was visiting to… try to help them? Or just to do something else related to them regardless of caring how they turned out. That’s my theory anyway.

Anyway, I hope the reading gets a little more easy for you! I don’t think the amount you had to look up is truly unreasonable (in the way of like, gauging the difficulty relative to what you know) but I don’t do manual lookups often so I can only imagine how much work that ended up being. My hope is that, with the way the story has only now begun to hint at its true nature and real players, we’re hitting the part most relevant for the old maxim “the beginning is the hardest part” and in a few weeks it’ll be reinforcing the sort of stuff you had to look up this time :crossed_fingers:

7 Likes